In the past law enforcement officers, surveillance, or security personnel attempting to identify vehicles and/or occupants of vehicles have observed a license plate without the use of a camera or an optical input device other than eyeglasses. An officer or security guard was thereby required to be sufficiently close to a vehicle to observe the license plate. The presence of the officer was thereby often revealed to the occupant of the vehicle under investigation. The failure to use optical input devices has slowed down or delayed the timing for vehicle identification as well as the identification of the vehicle owner and make or model for the vehicle. In addition the communication of information to an officer or guard as to the criminal history of the likely driver or registered owner of the vehicle was also delayed.
In the past upon the identification of a license plate an officer frequently manually entered the license plate number into a keypad to initiate access to a database which distracted the officer's attention from the vehicle. An officer was thereby less likely to observe erratic or otherwise suspicious driving characteristics for the vehicle. The safety to the officer and/or to other individuals was thereby reduced. It is desirable to identify the ownership of a vehicle, in that, rental vehicles may have a higher probability of including an explosive device.
In the past following entry of a license plate number into a keypad, a communication link was required to access a database to retrieve desired information such as the make, model, registration, listed owner, status of license tabs, insurance status, outstanding violations, individual identification, outstanding warrants, or other information. The data link permitted the display of the retrieved information onto a screen mounted for observation by an officer or guard. The officer or guard was then required to view the screen to become advised of the desired information, again distracting the officer from a vehicle or occupant under investigation. No processor was known to intelligently and/or automatically evaluate or filter information retrieved from a database in real time, to identify a potentially dangerous condition or a necessity to implement a more detailed inquiry related to a vehicle. No warning signal was known to automatically warn an officer as to the existence of a potentially dangerous situation or a condition requiring further investigation.
Some squad vehicles, checkpoints, and/or guard stations include photographic equipment such as cameras and/or video recorders to assist in the observation of vehicles or license plates for vehicles. Generally this type of optical equipment is expensive and not available for all police or emergency vehicles or restricted access locations. In addition the use of cameras, video equipment, or optical visual assist devices continues to require an officer or guard to manually enter a license plate number into a keypad duplicating the disadvantages as identified above. A need therefore exists for a device and method to intelligently and automatically observe a license plate for conversion into a digital format for comparison in real time to a database to identify information related to the vehicle and/or the vehicle occupant.
Following the retrieval of information from a database, an officer, security, or surveillance personnel normally cleared the information from a vehicle display. In the past, generally no record of any access or prior investigation was made or stored for future reference by the law, security, or surveillance personnel and/or officers. In the past, it has not been known to make an environmentally specific database for a security zone of vehicles to identify the number and identity of each vehicle within the security zone which may include, but is not necessarily limited to, a garage, hospital, school, and/or an airport parking lot any particular point in time.
No system was known which identified vehicle license plates and vehicles, created a database, and tracked the vehicles within a specific security zone.
No system has also been known which enables an operator to search or screen a specifically accumulated database for a security zone for vehicles falling within a particular sub-class or group for implementation of a more detailed investigation by a security, surveillance, or law enforcement officer. In addition, no system is known which enables a security, surveillance, or law enforcement officer to either select one of many pre-programmed inquiries based upon profiles, searches, or screening functions in real time to implement a specific customized inquiry of the accumulated database to identify a specific target group of vehicles to receive further investigation.
In the past mirrors as mounted on an elongated handle or rolling mechanism have been used for positioning under a vehicle to enable inspection of the undercarriage of a vehicle. Generally the use of mirrors for inspection of the undercarriage of a vehicle have failed to provide the opportunity for a complete and detailed inspection of the vehicle. Alternatively individuals have placed themselves on hands and knees to attempt to look under a vehicle to perform an inspection to identify the presence of explosive devices.
As is known terrorists have secreted explosive devices within the undercarriage of a vehicle to perform a terrorist attack. In addition, in the past, a terrorist has attempted to hide the existence of an explosive or bomb under a cover as attached to the undercarriage of a vehicle. The existence of a cover alters the appearance of an undercarriage as compared to the appearance of a standard undercarriage for an identical vehicle. No intelligent and automatic method of recognizing the existence of an explosive, or the alteration of an undercarriage to hide an explosive, is known to detect the existence of an attempted terrorist attack.
Further, no device has been known to identify and track a person within a security zone absent affirmative actions by the person, or use of a trackable device by the person, such as a personalized keycard.
All US patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief description of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention are set forth below. Additional details of the described embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well, only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.